Smart grid

A smart grid is an electricity network that uses digital and other advanced technologies to monitor and manage the transport of electricity from all generation sources to meet the varying electricity demands of end-users.

‘Energy transition’, ‘electrical grid transformation’, ‘Power Shifts’; what is all that buzz?

—confused participant of Power Shifts and really cool person

This vision of the 'energy transition;' is built around the modernisation of the electrical grid, with the gradual development of smart grids, which use information and communication technologies (ICT) to manage electricity more efficiently while adding new nodes to the electrical grid such as Renewable Energy Sources (RES), thus turning households into a consumer-producer-hybrid. The promise of the smart grid is to enable a new paradigm with a reduced energy cost and the environmental benefits of RES.

Breaking it down

• Intelligent and digitised energy network
• Two-way dialogue: Electricity and Information
• Information + Communication + Power Grid
• Reliable, Secure, Efficient, Modern, Manageable → Full Potential
• The integration of power, communications, and information technologies for an improved electric power infrastructure serving loads while providing for an ongoing evolution of end-use applications.
• A marketing term, rather than a technical definition. For this reason there is no well defined and commonly accepted scope of what "smart" is and what it is not.

Traditional grids

Traditionally, energy systems from power generation to homes are one-directional and based on more predictable, controllable and centralised power generation, looking something like this:

Challenges

• Electrical power is increasingly substituted for other forms of energy. Electricity demand will increase in the future (notably because of new needs in transport and heat sectors), although it is currently stagnant, mainly because of the economic crisis. Unless a major alternative energy source is discovered, electricity will become the central energy pillar in the long term.
• Electricity production remains uncertain and will depend on numerous factors: the growth of renewable energy and decentralised energy, the renewal of old power generation capacities, increased external dependency, CO2 charges, etc. This increases the demand for electricity networks that are more reliable, more efficient, and more flexible.
• Europe’s current electricity networks are ageing, and, as already indicated by the International Energy Agency, many of them will need to be modernized or replaced in the decades to come.
• The growing impact of energy trading also needs to be taken into account.

How does the EU define smart grids?

What shale gas did to the US economy, smart grids can and should do in Europe.

—Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič (Vice-President for Energy Union)

In its April 2011 communication ‘Smart Grids: from innovation to deployment’, the Commission describes smart grids as ‘an upgraded electricity network to which two-way digital communication between supplier and consumer, intelligent metering and monitoring systems have been added. Intelligent metering is usually an inherent part of smart grid.’
In its 2050 Energy Roadmap, smart grids play a central role in the future decarbonised energy power systems. Their successful deployment touches all the fundamental objectives of EU energy policy – sustainability, security and competitiveness, the creation of the energy single market, as well as the 2030 climate targets.

Smart grids ‘and meters’?

To facilitate the development of smart grids, the Commission encourages the deployment of smart metering across EU Member States, in line with the recommendations of the 2009 gas and electricity packages, as an important first step towards smart grids.

In alignment, smart meters today remain the most advanced concretisation of the smart grids. This constitutes a paradox. Smart meters are largely a national matter. Their transnational aspects remain quite limited. The other aspects of smart grids (smart network management, integration of large scale renewable electricity, or systems of storage for example) are of a more transnational character, but their progress is limited.

EU legislation and policy documents

• Electricity and Gas Directives 2009/72/EC and 2009/73/EC
• Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EC
• Energy Infrastructure Regulation (EU) 347/2013
• Electro-mobility Alternative Fuels Directive AFID, 2013/0012(COD)
• Recommendation 2012/148/EU on smart metering roll-out
• Recommendation 2014/724/EU Data Protection Impact Assessment Template
• COM(2011)202 on Smart Grids
• COM(2012)663 on the Internal Energy Market
• COM (2013)7243 on IEM and public intervention
• SWD(2013)442 on Demand Side Flexibility
• COM(2014) 356 Benchmarking Report on Smart Metering & accompanying SWDs